Cherry Chocolate Murder Page 8

  It all fit together.

  On the way to visit Roscoe each morning, Clarence was probably in the habit of stopping by Lavinia’s room and slipping his daily love-note under her door. The one threat-letter to Malcolm would have been easy to deliver, too, because Malcolm arrived to eat just as Clarence was leaving.

  Neither Roscoe nor Nick, had been told much when Roscoe was released other than that new evidence had been found pointing to another person as the poisoner. Bitsie was pretty sure that Roscoe had no clue that Clarence Crake was the one who had attempted to kill Malcolm Smith and get Roscoe blamed for it.

  Oh, well, Bitsie thought to herself, sharing that news could wait until Clarence’s arrest. Bitsie hoped that would happen tomorrow. It made her nervous that a crazy poisoner was on the loose in Shady Grove.

  “You worried about something?” Nick asked.

  “Do I look worried?” Bitsie asked, as she closed up the little red notebook and tucked it into her purse.

  “Yes, you do. Your forehead is all wrinkled up.”

  “At my age,” Bitsie pointed out, “one’s forehead is always wrinkled up.”

  “You want something to eat before you go?” Nick asked. He looked genuinely worried about her.

  “No, I’m fine,” Bitsie insisted.

  “I don’t think you are,” said Nick. “There’s that thing with Anabel and her no-good boyfriend, and you’ve been working so hard to find out who poisoned that cupcake, and I’ve been—“

  He’d been hanging out with his ex-wife, and that had got to bother her, Bitsie was pretty that was what he couldn’t bring himself to say out loud. She’d tried to hide it, but he must have figured out that she had a little crush on him. It was more than a little crush, to be honest. Nick was a terrific guy—terribly unsuitable for her—but terrific, nonetheless.

  Bitsie got up from her seat at the dining room table and started to put on the coat that she’d hung over the back of her chair.

  “At least have a cup of cocoa before you go,” Nick insisted.

  Bitsie continued to silently put on her coat.

  “Are you crying, Bitsie?” Nick asked in alarm.

  She was crying, and she didn’t even know why. She turned her back on Nick and started to clumsily do up the buttons on her coat.

  Nick came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. She tried to shrug him off, but he just held on tighter.

  “Is this about Tracy?” Nick asked in a voice too low for Roscoe to hear.

  “No,” said Bitsie. I was about Tracy, but she wasn’t about to admit that to Nick.

  “You know we didn’t actually end up getting back together, don’t you?”

  “Whether you did or didn’t get back together with your ex-wife is really none of my business, and, providing you’re happy, I can’t say I care much one way or the other,” said Bitsie. She would have sounded more convincing if she hadn’t had to stop and sniff several times during her statement.

  “Well, we didn’t get back together,” said Nick against her ear. “Tracy wanted us to give it another go, and we did go out a few times before she went back to Lincoln—”

  “You really don’t need to explain—“

  “Oh, but I think I do.”

  Nick still had his arms wrapped around her, and Bitsie was pretty sure Roscoe was watching them. She could feel that her face was burning, and it wasn’t just that she was getting uncomfortably warm inside her coat.

  “How about you let go of me before your grandfather—“

  “Gets the wrong idea?”

  “Yes.”

  Abruptly, Nick let her go and came around to stand in front of her.

  “You do realize why I was so quick to send Tracy back to Nebraska?”

  Bitsie shrugged.

  “I’m grateful to her, really,” said Nick.

  “You are? Why?”

  “I’m genuinely grateful that she made me see that I’ve finally fallen in love again with someone else.”

  Bitsie just stared at him. He’d fallen in love? Who had Nick fallen in love with? She didn’t want to know.

  “That’s nice,” she said flatly. “I’m very happy for you.”

  “You don’t look very happy,” said Nick.

  “Of course, I’m happy for you,” Bitsie insisted. “You’re my friend. Why wouldn’t I be happy that you’ve found love again.”

  “What about you?” Nick asked. He looked far more amused than he ought to, under the circumstances.

  “What about me?”

  “Have you found love again, or are you still hung up on Robert?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Which is it?” Nick asked, he was smiling broadly now, which hardly seemed appropriate for the situation. “Is that ‘no’ to having fallen in love, or ‘no’ to still being hung up on your ex-husband?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bitsie. “Why do you keep asking me so many questions, it’s not—“

  She was terribly flustered. She was even more flustered when Nick leaned in and kissed her, right there in his dining-room.

  Chapter Ten

  The search of Clarence Crake’s room yielded just the evidence that Bitsie had hoped it would. Faced with the contents of the eviscerated teddy bear which Bitsie had recovered from the dumpster, and the stack of written correspondence clearly establishing motive and intent, Clarence confessed and was charged with attempting to murder Malcolm Smith.

  He was released on bail, but Shady Grove refused to take him back while he awaited trial, so Clarence was shipped off to live with his niece and elderly sister in Little Rock until his court date. Bitsie hoped they had the foresight to lock up the medicine cabinet.

  After two weeks with her sister, Anabel returned to work. James was still awaiting trial, but Anabel was granted a restraining order and moved in with her cousin and her cousin’s 250-pound former Navy SEAL husband, so Bitsie felt a little more at ease about her safety.

  Stan assured her that both Clarence and James’s cases were slam-dunks, and, that by spring, both would be safely behind bars or—in the case of Clarence—a secure facility. Stan predicted that Clarence’s lawyer would plead insanity because of Clarence’s steadily deteriorating mental capacity and that Clarence would likely end up in something looking a lot less like a prison and a lot more like a locked-down version of Shady Grove.

  Thanksgiving was approaching, and Bitsie hadn’t decided whether to drive down to Dallas to spend it with her daughter, Emily, or to remain in Little Creek and celebrate the holiday with Stan and Liz.

  Then, suddenly, a week before Thanksgiving, both of her options fell through.

  Stan and Liz announced that they had booked a last-minute Caribbean cruise—they’d gotten the deal-of-a-lifetime, they said—and they did not invite Bitsie to come along. Then, a day later, Emily called and said that she and her husband were both down with a terrible flu. She was postponing Thanksgiving dinner, Emily said, until she and Bradley were able to keep down solid food.

  Bitsie was disappointed. She’d been so busy lately that she hadn’t had time to feel lonely, but now it felt like a dark cloud was washing over her.

  “Well, Max,” she said, as she stood at her kitchen sink, dejectedly washing dishes. “I guess it’s just you and me for Thanksgiving.”

  She had a sudden vision of herself shaping gravy-soaked Svelte Kitty Cat Food into the shape of a tiny turkey and digging into her own “rations-for-one” mashed potatoes and gravy. How pathetic would that be?

  She wondered what Nick was doing for Thanksgiving. Since he’d kissed her, he’d been keeping his distance. He must be waiting for her to make her move. He’d made himself perfectly clear. Nick liked her. He had come right out and said so. Actually, he’d gone one step further: he’d come right out and said he was in love with her. And what had she said back? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No wonder he was keeping his distance. He must think she wasn’t interested in pursuing a relationship. It was a reasonable assumption. She had on
ly been divorced for a little less than seven months, although she and Robert had been separated for quite a while before that.

  Was she ready to start a new relationship? She liked Nick a lot. No, she didn’t just like Nick. What she felt for Nick was a lot more like love, but until he’d kissed her, she hadn’t had a shred of hope that he loved her back.

  “You know what, Max?” Bitsie said.

  Max looked up at her from his rug in the sunniest corner of Bitsie’s tiny kitchen.

  “I’ll still make you a turkey out of Svelte Kitty Cat Food, but I’m not going to spend Thanksgiving alone.”

  Nick picked up on the first ring.

  “Hello,” he said, sounding nervous.

  “I’d like to go out on a date. With you,” Bitsie said, foolishly, as if she’d call Nick up and inform him that she desired a date with someone else.

  “Oh—“

  “On Thanksgiving.”

  “Uh—It’s just Granddad and me. Mom is going to spend Thanksgiving with my stepdad’s parents in Virginia. But, if you want to join us, that would be great. I thought maybe we’d find some restaurant that serves one of those turkey and gravy dinners.”

  “I guess Thanksgiving’s not really an appropriate first date,” said Bitsie.

  “No—“ said Nick. “Wait, I didn’t mean that. It’s not a very usual first date, but then we aren’t a very usual couple.”

  Couple? Were they a couple?

  “I didn’t mean ‘couple’ in the usual sense,” continued Nick, clearly thrown off balance. “I’m not trying to pressure you into a commitment or anything.”

  “Well, I was the one who invited myself to a family holiday,” said Bitsie, “so I suppose that was a bit presumptuous.”

  “I wouldn’t call that presumptuous; we’re not—“

  “—the usual sort of couple,” Bitsie finished his statement with a sigh, before adding, “We can have dinner here. I’ll make the turkey,” and hanging up.

  “I’m the turkey!” Bitsie said to Max. “I’m the biggest turkey in the history of Thanksgiving.”

  Max, indignant that his peace had been shattered, left his rug in the corner and stalked off with his tail in the air, looking for a quiet spot to resume his nap.

  “Turkey! Turkey! Turkey!” Bitsie repeated as she smacked herself on the forehead with the flat of her hand. Whoever said that dating got easier as a person got older had clearly not been speaking from experience.

  But her embarrassment quickly gave way to anticipation. She’d make her grandmother’s cranberry-orange relish. She’d make pumpkin pie with cardamom, and walnut apple stuffing and—

  She walked into her living room. She’d keep up her tradition of decorating the Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving dinner. She frowned. Perhaps, she wouldn’t. Her living room was a little small to accommodate a Christmas tree. Perhaps, this year, she’d just have to settle for a sprig of mistletoe.

  The End